How to Pick the Right Group Tour of Scotland

• • Pick Your Dates Carefully (and Pack Accordingly)

To help narrow the options down, we first selected the dates that we would be traveling and then used tour aggregators to filter our searches.  Before you select your dates, however, you should do more than just consult the articles on when to go to Scotland because, well, Scotland is not California.  The weather in Scotland might be a major factor determining when you will visit, what you will pack, and what you will be able to see/experience/take pictures of.
 

When we were packing for our Scotland trip, it was sunny and 95 degrees in Texas.  I was so hot.  I looked at the weather forecast for Scotland, and temperatures in the 50s with a little rain didn’t scare me.  I had a raincoat and experience layering.  When packing, I told Howie that he didn’t need the turtlenecks and heavy sweatshirt and pulled them out of his suitcase.  On our Scotland tour during the first two weeks of October, it rained every single day.  By day two in Edinburgh, Howie had bought a puffer vest.  By day five, Howie had bought a Harris Tweed cap.  He noticed that we seemed to be the only ones that didn’t get the memo for full-zip rain pants.

Do you know that the west coast of Scotland has more rain than the east coast?  Do you know that Inverness, Scotland is at the same latitude as the Gulf of Alaska?  Do you know that the wettest parts of Scotland have an average of 250 days of rain per year?  Do you know that Oban, Scotland’s climate with 198 days of rain per year beat Seattle, Washington’s 156 days?  Do you know that the raincoat was invented in Scotland by Charles Macintosh, a chemist born in Glasgow?  Have you ever questioned why emigrants to Nova Scotia settled there instead of giving up after the first winter and heading south?  It probably reminded them of home.

In our defense, we did pack quick-dry hiking pants (you can’t sit for hours on a bus with wet jeans), waterproof hiking shoes, hooded rain jackets, and automatic umbrellas, but it wasn’t enough.  We were not prepared for the wet gusts that sideswiped us in the Highlands and on the west coast. The rain would start with three-second warning-shot sprinkles and then the deluge would begin. If you didn’t open your automatic umbrella within those first three seconds, you were going to get very wet.  We longed for foul weather gear.

The weather can also affect planned sights and activities.  For example, our tour group’s trip up the cable cars at Britain’s highest peak was canceled because the cable cars weren’t running in the downpours.  We also had to cross our fingers and toes that the two ferries to the Isles of Mull and Iona would be running when we arrived on the west coast.

Finally, the weather can affect your ability to enjoy an outdoor sight or even see or take pictures out of the bus windows, especially with an automatic camera or cell phone because it will focus on the raindrops on the window rather than the landscape.

If Howie had been driving, there were many, many times that I would have lingered in a cute town or asked him to pull over to capture the shot.  

That said, you can’t change the weather — only your response to the weather.  Plan accordingly, and you’ll enjoy seeing this magical land of rainbows and unicorns.  One day, I counted 5 rainbows!  It wasn’t so bad because, after all, they say that today’s rain is tomorrow’s whisky in Scotland.

In short, you should not only research “the best times to go to Scotland” and temperature ranges, but you should carefully consider historic information about average rainfall for different parts of Scotland.   You’re welcome. 🙂

In addition to the weather, however, you should also consider whether you’d like to be in Scotland for a particular event, like the Highland Games or the Edinburgh Military Tattoo in the summer or Hogmanay in the winter.  There is also something to be said for being in Scotland right now while history is being made.  At the time of our visit, the UK was in the process of pulling out of the EU pursuant to a 2016 referendum of voters and had requested extensions of the two-year withdrawal deadline until October 31, 2019.  Our tour guide emphasized that the question of Brexit had divided families for the past three years and had raised questions regarding whether Scotland would vote to become independent from England and what to do about the border between Northern Ireland (that is part of the UK) and the Republic of Ireland (that is not part of the UK).  Finally, another factor that could affect the timing of your trip is the fact that the British Pound to U.S. dollar conversion rate is at the lowest that it has ever been since 1985.

• • Compare the Tour Itineraries

On our AWAY-DECIDE page (under the GROUP SIZE tab), you can find a handy list of tour aggregators with helpful filters for locations, dates, group size, ages, activities, etc.  Even with helpful online tools, however, we quickly found that the number of tours and their itineraries can be overwhelming unless you already have a good idea of what you want to see in Scotland.

We then compared 10 general itineraries of major tours (5 Scotland only/5 Scotland plus other countries) running during the fall of 2019 to get a handle on what those companies advertised as the “must do” sights/activities.